Sotomayor Nomination

Floor Speech

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, Senator Leahy's decision to rush Judge Sotomayor's confirmation hearing is, indeed, puzzling. It risks resulting in a less-informed hearing, and it breaks with years of tradition in which bipartisan agreements were reached and honored over the scheduling of hearings for Supreme Court nominees. It damages the cordiality and good will the Senate relies on to do its business. These kinds of partisan maneuvers have always come with consequences. This time is no different.

The explanations that some of our friends offered yesterday to justify a rushed hearing were almost as remarkable as the decision itself and the partisan way in which it was handled. Some said Republicans proposed unreasonable hearing dates. Yet no one can cite the time and place when any of these supposed requests were made.

But blaming Republicans for statements they never made was not as ludicrous as the claim that Judge Sotomayor's long judicial record is somehow reason to rush the review process. Not only is this counterintuitive--why should it take less time to read more cases?--it also flies in the face of every statement our Democratic friends made on the topic after the nomination of the last two Supreme Court nominees.

Time and time again, they told us the Senate was not a rubberstamp and that hearings for Judge Alito and Judge Roberts could not be rushed. As Senator Leahy put it at the time:

We want to do it right. We don't want to do it fast.

Republicans respected these requests because we recognized the importance of a thorough review. On the Alito nomination, for instance, Senators had 70 days to prepare for a hearing on a nominee who, as Senator Leahy noted at the time, had handled some 3,500 cases on the Federal bench. Judge Sotomayor has handled over 3,600 cases, so it stands to reason we would have as much time to review her record as we did Judge Alito's. But for some reason, the old standard has been thrown out as new reasons have emerged for rushing the process on this nominee.

As Senator Sessions informed us yesterday, the questionnaire Judge Sotomayor filled out suffers from significant omissions. For example, she failed to produce numerous opinions from cases in which she was involved as a district attorney.

In addition, she failed to produce a memorandum from her time with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund that opposed the application of the death penalty. When this omission was brought to the judge's attention, I understand the White House then provided this memorandum, saying it was an oversight. But in the rush to complete the questionnaire in order to garner a talking point, you are prone to these sorts of mistakes. This, of course, counsels the Senate to have a thorough, deliberative process, not a rush to judgment in order to meet an arbitrary deadline.

When it came to Republican nominees such as Judge Roberts and Judge Alito, our Democratic friends wanted to review the record, and Republicans worked in a bipartisan fashion to come to a consensus on a fair process that respected the minority's rights. Yet when it comes to a Democratic nominee, our friends want to deny Republicans the same rights. They want the shortest confirmation timeline in recent memory for someone with the longest judicial record in recent memory. Let me say that again.

They want the shortest confirmation timeline in recent memory for someone with the longest judicial record in recent memory.

This violates basic standards of fairness, and it prevents Senators from carrying out one of their most solemn duties--a thorough review of the President's nominee to a lifetime position on the highest Court in the land. The decision to short circuit that process is regrettable and completely unnecessary.

I yield the floor.

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